This is my first review on MAL.
During the past three months I kept wondering why people seem to have less interest on planetarian anime and finally conclude that: 1st, planetarian is not a good selection for adaptation and 2nd, the way they adapted is not very good.
Before I get started reviewing, Let me introduce the VN. It's a kinectic developed by key's novelist Suzumato, the author who also writes the Kotomi's route in clannad and the "Summer Route" in air. It's the fourth project developed by key, and ranked on the 4th
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place besides the famous clannad, rewrite, and little buster on VNDB. Most importantly, although it's short, it does earn widely praise from both VN readers and non-VN readers like me and generally considered as the gem-star made by key itself. Readers appreciate the inspiration they earned from this novel, and, most critically, the thought. If you read planetarian carefully and interpret different plots, you will surely learn different aspect from this novel and evaluate this novel differently. That's how planetarian VN looks like, a classic and charming novel.
However, I do not really expect it to be animated, In other words, planetarian itself does not fit pretty well in the anime industry. First of all, novel and anime are two different methods for loading the information, To read something, reader cares more about the usage of words and what they can learn from those words and those quotes made up by those words in order to judge the novel itself. By contrast, while watching anime, the childish entertainment, people more care about the frequent change of different scene and sufficient actions created by anime characters for acquiring visual satisfactory before they judge and evaluate the story itself, planetarian is good to read, but not good to watch because it is too short and the majority part of this novel is dialogue and monologue, which can not satisfy the visual satisfactory of audience as an anime and lower their impression at the beginning before they get involved into analyze the story and judge them. So, planetarian does have some disadvantages as an anime.
How about the adaptation itself? Well, I have to say that it's a very good and straightforward adaptaion. The 3rd episode enable my emotions and drive me to place myself into the story and enjoy the lecture being delivered by Yumei. Those gorgeous legendary and those exploration of mankind for their future development and civilization inheritance does strike me so hard and makes me almost cry. However, the problem is that the adaptation is so straightforward and David Production merely copy from the original source and cut a lot of important monologues. So, VN fans will enjoy the anime. General audience? not really because while they are looking for something fun and frequent change of scene, they fail on discovering it. Plus, the design of Yumei does not fit the world proprietate. She is supposed to be a robot, and a pathetic robot, not the moe girl like general dispissed harem anime, which somehow makes people feel sucks. Additonally, David Production should cut some quotes from Yumei and just briefly introduce Yumei instead of adding tons of "I am sorry", Those apologize works pretty well in the novel because it helps reader know Yumei better. But in anime, nobody really wants to hear those pointless apologize, it just annoy them. Plus, The monologue of junkers in the VN is pretty important because it makes readers to think and dig out the depth, the thought behinds his monologue. however, I rarely find those details in the anime. So, how does planetarian make audience think? A big question. Finally, the ED makes me feel disgust. It ruins all the atmosphere thoroughly, the volume of OST of last episode is too low to encourage audience associate their emotion and compassion with the story itself.
Overall, I still enjoy this anime as a fan of original source. However, there are a few critical issues makes me disappointed. Planetarian is like a high-quality and gorgeous status being hidden among the general VNs. It only needs to be engraved a little bit before people can witness the shine of this artifact. Did I witness the shine being glowed? Not really.
Another thing I want to complain about is key itself. Starting announcing the adaptation of planetarian is only two months before it is played. I know planetarian is not very hard to be adapted, but if key really wants it to become good and makes audience praise it, why don't they announce planetarian adaptation earlier and give DP more time? As far as I know, planetarian's director really squeeze his time for adapting planetarian. No matter how hard he try, the time is always limited, the quality will not be as good as I expect.
May 26, 2017
This is my first review on MAL.
During the past three months I kept wondering why people seem to have less interest on planetarian anime and finally conclude that: 1st, planetarian is not a good selection for adaptation and 2nd, the way they adapted is not very good. Before I get started reviewing, Let me introduce the VN. It's a kinectic developed by key's novelist Suzumato, the author who also writes the Kotomi's route in clannad and the "Summer Route" in air. It's the fourth project developed by key, and ranked on the 4th ... |